


Words Are All I Have

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five different experiences with writing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words Are All I Have

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round Six over at [Big Bang Land](http://community.livejournal.com/bigbang_land). We had twelve prompts and multiple media options and for some reason 'text' was the only prompt I actually wrote for.

Sheldon resents the times his writing goes from nice and accurate to the ballooning scrawl it becomes when he’s on a roll. He tries to slow down, to keep his cursive legible, and when that fails he devolves back to printing, but neither can keep up with the flow of his thoughts.

The first time he lays hands on a computer keyboard he knows he’ll never have to slow his fingers to match the speed of his mind again.

He ends up getting his first whiteboard when he remembers he likes other people to know just how smart he is.

* * *

Beverly monitors Leonard’s ability to write from the moment he first makes his name in big straggling pencil letters right up to the first paper he gets published. It starts out as her keeping an eye on his development, making sure he’s not a late bloomer, but quickly turns into just another aspect of his life she controls.

The day he opens his diary to find that she’s corrected his spelling with a red pen, that’s the day he gives up handwriting for a full year in favour of password protection and encryption keys.

She pretends not to notice.

* * *

Penny writes on the backs of things. Supermarket receipts, phone bills, her own hands, her order pad at work, the notebook she vainly tries to take notes in when Sheldon attempts to teach her basic physics.

The notebook’s already a quarter full of notes from college. They start out neat, each page headed with the date and the class. By page five, there are doodles in the margin. By page nine, the doodles are more elaborate. By page eleven, they’re half-page drawings: theater sets, dress designs, surrounded by chains of lovehearts.

By the twenty-fourth page, they’re back to mere aimless squiggles.

* * *

When Howard’s a high school senior the notebook he uses as a journal falls out of his bag one day and, as these things often are, is picked up and passed around. He doesn’t know why the guys who usually try to stuff him into his locker are slapping him on the back and winking at him until lunchtime.

That’s when Annabel comes up to him in the cafeteria and slaps him across the face with the notebook.

The guys quickly figure out that all the elaborately detailed sex scenes are fantasies, not memories, and throw him in the dumpster.

* * *

Raj never writes anything private down when he’s growing up because he has too many nosy siblings, i.e. all of them. He has things written _about_ him on toilet walls; that doesn’t stop even when he gets to America and it’s impersonal racial slurs instead of directly targeted at him.

What does change is that he starts keeping a diary. He fills it with his impressions of the country, the people, the differences.

Priya’s still his nosy little sister, though, and when she gets her hands on it, somehow his words as she reads them back don’t sound right anymore.


End file.
